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Kazakhstan border

Finally time to do some blogging so much has happened that I just cannot write it all so here are some bits and pieces. We made it to Kazakhstan and the border crossing was a breeeeeez so different to the Russian border. There were no queues and the border customs guards were so friendly and nice, a great welcome to their country. From the border the road just stretches on and on and on, the landscape is so different quite dry but just so VAST and flat, the plains stretch out with no contours or buildings not anything but grass for as far as the eye can see. This country is huge it’s taken my breath away.

Even the Kaz police are nice, they are as corrupt as the Russians but so nice about it and charge more reasonable bribes. As soon as you are stopped the things to do is just stick out your hand and shake the cops hand say Hi be friends and they bribes are approx 1000 to 2000 Kaz Tenge. We’ve even had cops invite us home for dinner but due to our timetable have not been able to accept and what a pity because I think that would have been great. We’ve even been let off fines on the odd occasion. One guy stopped us and then saw that I was a girl and said “ah Frauline, Frauline I love you, ok go go” and we got off. This happened twice, and on another occasion I was changed 1000 Kaz ts, and the guys 2000 just because I am a woman, we had a good laugh at that one.

We’ve encounters cops almost once every day but it was not too bad until 2 days out of Almaty then we went though countless speed traps and it really got on our nerves. The cops sit about 3km after the road works speed signed on the motorway. The speed is 50km/hr on the most beautiful long flat perfect motorway, go figure I guess they need to stock up on new police cars so are out in force making money. Cesar eventually found a while van that was speeding along like crazy and just sat behind that figuring that he would get caught. However it seems that he was on some radio to other folks as every now and again he would really slow down and a few ks later we’d see the cops… Thanks while van man 🙂